


In a Name

by Philomytha



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-30
Updated: 2012-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-30 09:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/330120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The entrance interviews for the Imperial Service are a bit harder if you're Komarran.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> Written for Winterfair 2012 for the prompt 'Galeni making the decision to go back to the Academy or dealing with the immediate consequences of having done so.'.

Duv's first recruitment interview had been the standard one: name and ID, qualifications for officers' training, certificate of medical fitness, references and sponsors. But when he listed his planet of origin as Komarr, the previously bland and bored officer frowned and folded his arms. 

"We're not set up to process Komarran applicants here. You should go and volunteer on Komarr, they're ready to deal with you people there." 

Duv had tensed, both at that 'process' and at the request. "I don't live on Komarr, sir. I couldn't afford the jump-ship passage right now. There was no indication in the announcement that Komarrans had to apply on Komarr only." All his savings had been swallowed up by the three months without work, academic or casual, while he trained and studied for the Academy entrance exams. But if he wouldn't even be permitted to apply here...

He waited in silence while the recruiting officer scowled at his paperwork, then finally stood up, muttering, "They change all the rules under our feet and then expect us to catch up on overtime... well, go and wait outside."

Duv sat patiently for several hours, and finally had been called to a second interview. That, he later chalked down as one of the more unpleasant experiences of his life. It lasted three hours, and the senior officer was visibly hostile as he interrogated Duv on his history here and on Komarr, his motivations for volunteering, his academic research, and finally his Revolt file. Duv had sat still and taken it all, defending his application as he had his thesis, all emotion buttoned away, his every answer polite and complete. At last he'd been sent away, certain he'd said nothing wrong. 

Three days later his application papers were returned to him, stamped in red, APPLICATION REJECTED. 

There was an appeals process, the covering letter informed him, and grimly Duv began assembling the necessary paperwork, writing his most persuasive case for why the Barrayaran Imperium should permit him to offer them his life in their service. 

A week after that, he received another letter inviting him to a third interview.

When Duv presented himself at the Recruiting Office Headquarters at the appointed date and time, he had barely slept or eaten for days, watching and rewatching the announcement inviting Komarrans to volunteer for the Service, reading the Imperial Decree and every scrap of published information about it he could find. They did want him. The Emperor himself said so. The _Prime Minister_ said so...

"Dr Galeni? This way, please." 

The corporal was unexpectedly polite as he showed Duv up, a small kindness that made him relax a little. That relaxation vanished when he was ushered into a small interrogation room: bare walls, bare desk, two hard chairs, a man in dress greens with a thick folder in his hands. Duv read his uniform: a major, with the Imperial Security Horus-eyes on his collar. He swallowed. The last time he'd seen those Horus-eyes so close had been the day his father died. 

"Sir," Duv said. 

"Good afternoon," the major responded. "I am Major Thompson. Please sit down."

Duv sat, back straight, stomach churning. 

"You have applied for officers' training in the Imperial Service, your application was denied on security grounds, and you have appealed," Thompson stated as emotionlessly as a judge. "Because of the unusual circumstances of your case, I have been instructed to offer you an additional level of security screening. If you are willing to submit to a fast-penta interrogation, and if you then pass the interrogation, your application will be approved." 

As punctuation, Thompson laid a small medical case on top of the folder. Duv stared at it. It had a transparent cover, and he could see the narrow point of the hypospray inside. All his life, narrowed to that point...

What would they ask him? How would he answer? There were some questions he didn't even know the answer to himself. He forced his gaze away from the point of the hypospray to the major's face. The man was impassive, neither hostile nor sympathetic, and Duv knew he had no real choice. If he sat back and took this now, they would finally let him in, would trust him enough to let him play the great Vor game of power. 

"I am willing to undergo the fast-penta interrogation," he said. 

Thompson nodded slowly. "Very well. Roll up your left sleeve, please." 

Duv laid his arm on the table, and Thompson applied first the allergy test patch, and then drew the hypospray. 

"Count backwards from ten."

When Duv reached seven, the door opened behind him, and he twitched. A man in civvies entered, closed the door softly and came to stand at the side of the table, exactly halfway between Duv and Thompson where he could see both their faces, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. 

"... three, two, one." 

He knew the drug was taking effect when he looked at the new arrival again and for a moment seemed to see not a person but a giant Eye-of-Horus standing by the wall. The hallucination dissolved into reality a moment later, and Duv forced himself to look back at Thompson. Some strange cool distant part of his mind knew that whatever Thompson asked now, he would answer. Every secret, every whispered thought in the depths of his mind. He'd spent years building his mental walls, creating himself anew; now they felt as fragile as cobwebs. 

Naked, he sat at the desk, and for a moment it took all his will to stop himself from leaping to his feet and fleeing, running and running to the shuttleport, all the way back to his safe domes, to Komarr.

"... Komarr," he said aloud, in a soft-edged mumble. His accent, so painfully retaught, was revealed by the drug, he noticed dimly. 

Thompson glanced at the third man, who gave a slight nod. Duv wanted to agree: yes, he was under, they could start. Then Thompson placed his hands flat on the table and looked directly at him.

"What is your name?"

He had studied fast-penta procedure in his preparations for the Academy entrance exam, and he knew this was a standard opening line, easy questions with easy answers to get the subject used to the interrogation process. But this wasn't an easy question.

The answer began to rise up in his mind, from childhood, from school, from his home. _David Galen,_ he opened his mouth to say. 

_David Galen,_ his mother had shouted, _get down here this instant! Galen, where's your homework? David, tell your father thank you for the parcel... David Galen, can you explain why you were out on the streets two hours after curfew?_

Fast-penta improved your recall of past events, the book had said, but that memory had been too clear before, in the sharp iron scent of blood and the hideous mangled limbs, in the dust clouding his vision and the hiss of escaping atmosphere from the breach in the dome. He had followed his father and brother that night, curious and frightened, wanting to be part of what they were doing and not wanting to be too near. He hadn't seen the explosion, but he'd understood: they hadn't hit the security post. The bomb had gone off early--and he'd seen his father tuck it carefully inside his jacket. David had stared and stared and stared, willing it not to be true, until nightmare figures, breath-masked Barrayaran soldiers, had dragged him away from the bloody mess, wrapped him in blankets and gave him a hot drink--then questioned him. _What were you doing out of your home, David Galen?_

David Galen had died that night with his father and brother, in the dusty horror and his mother's tears and the certainty that whatever the future was, it wasn't _that_. He was not David Galen. But who then was he? He sat, nameless, answerless, and stared at his interrogator. 

"I don't know," he whispered. 

Thompson stared at him. "How can you not know--"

"We call fast-penta a truth drug," the man standing by the wall interrupted, "but it is important to remember that it is not a means of getting at the objective truth, but rather reveals what the subject believes to be true." He looked down. "Tell us your name." 

He'd tried on names after his father died like a vain boy trying to find the most fashionable jacket, and they'd slipped on and off as easily as a jacket, none of them part of his body. Even with fast-penta, he couldn't remember all of them: names from Komarran history, from Barrayaran history, off-world names, even, naively, a Vor name once, which had nearly got him arrested. None of those were the right answer. 

There was a small window in the interrogation room. He looked out, feeling the familiar flick of terror and amazement at the sight of the open sky, now magnified as the fast-penta dissolved his conscious rationalisations: he wasn't going to run out of oxygen, he wasn't going to freeze, it was perfectly safe. He looked lower, and saw Vorhartung Castle on the bluff above the river, the iconic image of the Barrayaran capital city, subject of a thousand picture postcards. He'd put that image up on the wall of his bedroom, after his father had died, when he'd looked around and seen that his father was gone and Barrayar was still there. 

There was only one future for Komarr, for him, not his father's way but the conquerors' way. That had been the understanding he'd groped towards, after his father's death, when he could look about and think for himself, discovered through study of history, of Barrayar, of Komarr, of himself. And after he understood that, he had known his name, the only possible name. He looked at the ImpSec men again, and smiled. 

"My name is Duv Galeni." 

The man by the wall gave a little sigh, straightened up and moved towards the door. Thompson turned his head alertly. "Sir?" he said. "Don't you want to stay--"

"That's all I needed to hear," the man said. "It's all right." 

"But--"

The man gave a slight smile. "You can continue if you want, for the records. Schedule B-2, the short form. I've got a few minutes." He returned to his place and made a little 'carry-on' gesture to Thompson. 

Thompson looked back at his papers, frowned, turned over several pages.

"Do you wish to overthrow the Emperor?" 

"No."

"Are you an assassin?"

"No."

There were a dozen more questions along those lines. No, Duv said cheerfully, he did not intend the Emperor any harm, no, nor Prime Minister Vorkosigan, he had not been paid or ordered or threatened or blackmailed into volunteering, he was not working for anyone else, he was not a Cetagandan agent, he was not a member of any proscribed organisation, he was volunteering of his own free will because he wanted to serve Barrayar. The questions were all easy now, and although Thompson made careful notes, the third man seemed bored, gazing idly into space. 

"All right," the other man said after ten minutes of this. "That's enough. He's through. Application accepted." He went to the desk, scribbled a signature on a flimsy, then nodded to Duv and went out, acknowledging Thompson's salute with a vague wave.

Once the door swung shut, Thompson picked up the second case on his desk. "This is the fast-penta antagonist. It will take a few seconds to take effect." He pressed a second hypospray to Duv's bare forearm. 

The drug euphoria gradually faded, leaving Duv feeling chilly and even more naked than before, as if he'd woken up from one of those bad dreams of losing your clothes and discovered it was true. They'd known. They'd known exactly what to ask, exactly where the core of his identity lay. 

"Who _was_ that?" he heard himself ask. A civilian... but no, Thompson had saluted. 

Thompson's eyebrows flew up. "That was Chief Illyan," he said. "Your case went all the way to the top before they settled on this compromise. I hope you do well in the Service, because a lot of important people have put time into your admission." 

"Oh," Duv said faintly, wondering how far 'all the way to the top' meant. The Emperor? Vorkosigan? Surely not. "I mean to, sir," he said, as firmly as he could. 

"And I see you're applying to the Imperial Military Academy," Thomspon went on as he folded the file shut. "A Komarran, by God." He passed Duv the flimsy Illyan had signed: his recruitment papers, marked 'accepted'. 

Duv nodded, looking at the flimsy in wonder. 

Thompson gave a slight smile, half ironic, half unexpectedly sympathetic. "I was in the first class there that admitted proles," he said. "And now it's Komarrans. Good luck to you, Dr Galeni. You'll need it." He stood up and gestured Duv towards the door. As he turned, Duv caught another glimpse of Vorhartung Castle. It lay before him now, he thought, and his father behind. He folded the flimsy and put it carefully in his pocket, and walked towards his new life.


End file.
